|
the Intellectual Essence, wholly of the order of Ideal-form,
must be taken as impassive has been already established.
But Matter also is an incorporeal, though after a mode of its
own; we must examine, therefore, how this stands, whether it is
passive, as is commonly held, a thing that can be twisted to
every shape and Kind, or whether it too must be considered
impassive and in what sense and fashion so. But in engaging this
question and defining the nature of matter we must correct
certain prevailing errors about the nature of the Authentic
Existent, about Essence, about Being.
The Existent- rightly so called- is that which has authentic
existence, that, therefore, which is existent completely, and
therefore, again, that which at no point fails in existence.
Having existence perfectly, it needs nothing to preserve it in
being; it is, on the contrary, the source and cause from which
all that appears to exist derives that appearance. This admitted,
it must of necessity be in life, in a perfect life: if it failed
it would be more nearly the nonexistent than the existent. But:
The Being thus indicated is Intellect, is wisdom unalloyed. It
is, therefore, determined and rounded off; it is nothing
potentially that is not of the same determined order, otherwise
it would be in default.
Hence its eternity, its identity, its utter irreceptivity and
impermeability. If it took in anything, it must be taking in
something outside itself, that is to say, Existence would at last
include non-existence. But it must be Authentic Existence all
through; it must, therefore, present itself equipped from its own
stores with all that makes up Existence so that all stands
together and all is one thing. The Existent [Real Being] must
have thus much of determination: if it had not, then it could not
be the source of the Intellectual Principle and of Life which
would be importations into it originating in the sphere of
non-Being; and Real Being would be lifeless and mindless; but
mindlessness and lifelessness are the characteristics of
non-being and must belong to the lower order, to the outer
borders of the existent; for Intellect and Life rise from the
Beyond-Existence [the Indefinable Supreme]- though Itself has no
need of them- and are conveyed from It into the Authentic
Existent.
If we have thus rightly described the Authentic Existent, we see
that it cannot be any kind of body nor the under-stuff of body;
in such entities the Being is simply the existing of things
outside of Being.
But body, a non-existence? Matter, on which all this universe
rises, a non-existence? Mountain and rock, the wide solid earth,
all that resists, all that can be struck and driven, surely all
proclaims the real existence of the corporeal? And how, it will
be asked, can we, on the contrary, attribute Being, and the only
Authentic Being, to entities like Soul and Intellect, things
having no weight or pressure, yielding to no force, offering no
resistance, things not even visible?
Yet even the corporeal realm witnesses for us; the resting earth
has certainly a scantier share in Being than belongs to what has
more motion and less solidity- and less than belongs to its own
most upward element, for fire begins, already, to flit up and
away outside of the body-kind.
In fact, it appears to be precisely the most self-sufficing that
bear least hardly, least painfully, on other things, while the
heaviest and earthiest bodies- deficient, falling, unable to bear
themselves upward- these, by the very down-thrust due to their
feebleness, offer the resistance which belongs to the falling
habit and to the lack of buoyancy. It is lifeless objects that
deal the severest blows; they hit hardest and hurt most; where
there is life- that is to say participation in Being- there is
beneficence towards the environment, all the greater as the
measure of Being is fuller.
Again, Movement, which is a sort of life within bodies, an
imitation of true Life, is the more decided where there is the
least of body a sign that the waning of Being makes the object
affected more distinctly corporeal.
The changes known as affections show even more clearly that where
the bodily quality is most pronounced susceptibility is at its
intensest- earth more susceptible than other elements, and these
others again more or less so in the degree of their corporeality:
sever the other elements and, failing some preventive force, they
join again; but earthy matter divided remains apart indefinitely.
Things whose nature represents a diminishment have no power of
recuperation after even a slight disturbance and they perish;
thus what has most definitely become body, having most closely
approximated to non-being lacks the strength to reknit its unity:
the heavy and violent crash of body against body works
destruction, and weak is powerful against weak, non-being against
its like.
Thus far we have been meeting those who, on the evidence of
thrust and resistance, identify body with real being and find
assurance of truth in the phantasms that reach us through the
senses, those, in a word, who, like dreamers, take for
actualities the figments of their sleeping vision. The sphere of
sense, the Soul in its slumber; for all of the Soul that is in
body is asleep and the true getting-up is not bodily but from the
body: in any movement that takes the body with it there is no
more than a passage from sleep to sleep, from bed to bed; the
veritable waking or rising is from corporeal things; for these,
belonging to the Kind directly opposed to Soul, present to it
what is directly opposed to its essential existence: their
origin, their flux, and their perishing are the warning of their
exclusion from the Kind whose Being is Authentic.
|
|